an ode to jammu

i hope to visit you someday & leave this letter (in a place where it belongs)

dear jammu,

i have never met you, but i know you exist in the spaces between conversations about kashmir. always in the shadows, always an afterthought. when people speak of your land, it is either in relation to the conflict or forgotten entirely. never given its own weight. its own story.

i have not walked your streets or breathed in your air, but i have heard of you. in passing mentions. in hurried corrections "jammu and kashmir" like you are one and the same. but i know that you are not.

they only remember you when they have to. when headlines need to fit a larger narrative. when there is something tragic enough to warrant a name drop. but no one asks how you are doing on the quiet days.

no one wonders what your people whisper about in the evenings when they sit on rooftops, looking out over a city that loves them but does not fight for them. no one asks if you feel overlooked. if you are tired of always standing in the wings while kashmir takes center stage. i wonder if you ever try to remind them that you exist. if you ever scream into the silence only to realize that no one is listening. i wonder if it hurts.

they say there is no snow here. no picture-perfect valleys. no reason to romanticize. but i think there is something devastatingly beautiful in the things that are not loved loudly. in the streets where the dust settles before anyone can brush it away. in the homes where the walls are lined with old photographs of people who left and never looked back. in the voices of grandmothers who sit in plastic chairs, telling stories of a time when things were different, when people still stayed.

maybe you are more beautiful than kashmir. quieter. softer. untouched by the greed that comes with tourism, by the hunger of people who see beauty only as something to be sold. here, shopkeepers do not yet hike prices at the sight of an outsider. instead, they might pull out a wooden stool, pour you a cup of tea, and sit with you: not as a transaction, but as a story. because here, visitors are still guests first, not customers. because here, people still believe in conversations, even if no one is listening.

i do not know you, jammu. but i see you.